Monday, January 12, 1998Last modified at 1:16 a.m. on Monday, January 12, 1998

Survey: Parents fail to teach about drugs

HOUSTON (AP) - Parents are failing to impress strongly enough upon their children the harm in using drugs, says a new survey by the Texas Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse.

Richard Spence, assistant deputy director of the commission, has tracked students' drug use trends since 1988.

He says children often justify alcohol and marijuana use by saying parents wouldn't care.

One of the worst things parents can do in trying to keep kids from drugs and alcohol is to fail to state their opposition to such behavior, Spence said.

"Unless you have explicitly said it - maybe more than once - they may not have received the communication that their parents disapprove," he said.

Last week, the commission released its biennial survey of 107,000 secondary students, those in grades 7-12, showing widespread dabbling with mind-altering substances, usually at off-campus parties, the Houston Chronicle reported.

Most students said they had been to parties where alcohol was available, although the experience was less common for seventh-graders (33 percent) than high school seniors (73 percent).

The state report listed several well-known "risk factors," such as a student's poor performance in school, that should alert parents that drugs might be a problem.

But fearful that some families have given up trying to prevent or curtail their children's drug use, the agency placed unusual emphasis on steps parents can take to address the problem close to home.

The suggestions included strategies that were proven successful elsewhere in the nation, as well as ideas that came directly from the teen-agers who participated in the 1996 statewide survey.

Here are some of the anti-drug tactics recommended by the state:

- Encourage children to take part in extracurricular activities, which helps them focus on school and burn free time and energy.

- Attend events at your child's school and support the school's activities. This reassures students about the importance of school.

- Help your child foster healthy relationships with friends.

- Clearly declare your opposition to drugs.

- Support anti-drug programs on campus.

- Emphasize the importance of good grades.

The recent survey indicated that students who participated in band or orchestra reported the lowest lifetime and current use of all substances except smokeless tobacco.

The voluntary poll found that nearly two-thirds of secondary-school students used illicit substances, including alcohol or tobacco, in the previous year. Even more - three out of four - said they had used some type of illicit drug in their lifetimes.

"The increases in illicit drug use resulted mostly from rising prevalence rates among eighth-graders, female students and African-American students," the report states. The conclusions are based on responses from students in 72 school districts in Texas.

The poll said marijuana's popularity is soaring, with surprising appeal among middle-schoolers. Use among eighth-graders has tripled in five years, the survey said.